I've been a fan of Grinding Gear Games for a long time now. I've been playing Path of Exile since Open Beta (January 2013), and have spent more than I care to admit supporting development of a game which is entirely free to play. And I do mean entirely free; none of the gameplay content will cost you a single cent, ever.
Did I mention that they just added six new acts to the story, and did away with the few-acts-repeating-with-bigger-damage-numbers structure that has been a feature of ARPGs since the original Diablo? PoE is now ten acts of story, which you play through once per character, before moving on to the end-game Atlas (i.e. lots of maps). Yes, there's a reason why David Brevik himself went to work for Grinding Gear Games, describing PoE as "push[ing] this genre to new heights" -- a genre that Brevik was instrumental in inventing, remember.
Excellent as PoE is, though, with its deep and engaging gameplay, and its industry-best ethical microtransaction model, the game has spent most of its existence in the shadow of Diablo 3. It didn't seem to matter when PoE was named as Gamespot's PC Game of the Year in 2013; the games media mostly didn't seem to notice that GGG had kept on improving the game, adding content at a rate that giants like Blizzard weren't even able to approach, let alone match. Fans of the game kept singing its praises, but sometimes it felt like we were preaching to the choir; the player base kept growing, but slowly, and the game never gained the kind of attention that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has managed to garner while still in early access.
GGG never let any of that stop them, though. They had a vision, and a supportive, steadily growing fan base, and they just kept on innovating, adding to and polishing their game until it really was the best ARPG ever made. Maybe that's why it feels so satisfying to see Path of Exile, and Grinding Gear Games, finally receiving their due and proper: top tier placement on Twitch, nestled between perennial A-list games like Hearthstone and Overwatch, with only DOTA2, PUBG, and League of Legends really outdoing them... and, let's face it, DOTA2 and LoL are behemoths of Esports that consistently outdo everybody, while PUBG is currently approaching saturation levels of gaming media coverage.
Even better, not only is PoE "suddenly" a top-tier streaming game, but a significant number of those Twitch streams have titles like this one:
or this one:
or this one:
And there are tons of new players that are finally trying the game for the first time, too:
Welcome, Exiles!I spend a lot of time on this blog railing against bad corporate behaviour, hoping to see that bad actors will eventually stop reaping lucrative rewards from their ill deeds, while suffering no adverse consequences to speak of. It really does warm my heart to see a bunch of really nice people finally receiving the attention they've always deserved, while still taking pride in treating both their fellow team members and their customers with decency and respect, regardless of how much money they've dropped on the game, if any.
Seeing an indie developer not only succeeding, but thriving, and knowing that they're really just getting started... well, this is the central myth of capitalism, isn't it? That anyone really can make it, given a good idea, a solid work ethic, and maybe just a little bit of luck.
So, kudos to the team at Grinding Gear Games, for making quite possibly the best ARPG ever, and for finally pushing the genre forward in ways that nobody else has since Diablo 2 provide the genre-defining template for ARPGs nearly eighteen years ago. Enjoy your success, folks; you've earned it.
Which is more than some can say, but that's a discussion for another day.